Libya: Negotiating Fault Lines by Creating a Culture of Change

The culture clash between extreme groups like those using the terms "jihad" and "crusade" to define an agenda of violence picked up steam this month as uprisings across the Middle East and Africa continued to dominate media coverage. It appears that when any one cultural group underestimates its influence on a populace - it resorts to violence to further an extremist agenda. Libya is the latest example of this: a push by a floundering antagonist to resist the groundswell of change rising from the least represented members of a society.

Clearly, when a wave for change is fueled by the underclass, the differences between cultures and classes gets lost in the undertow, as middle class workers and empathetic members of the elite follow the tidal surge, shoving the political extremists to the outer banks where they flounder in a lack of credibility. The violence subsides as the populace becomes united in one culture - that of change.

Once the tyrannical regime is flushed out, the task for the authors of change in Libya is to form the tactical and strategic initiatives to encourage Libyans to be agents of their own destiny and not rely on foreign political interests to shape the foundations of a new government. It is vital that Libyans achieve an inalienable right to a direct relation with their country's own resources - mainly oil. Otherwise the people of Libya will once again face the risk of falling prey to the old tactics of intervening actors from the exterior, bent on exploiting a country's resources by polarizing a populace against itself. These tactics have worked quite well throughout history, especially when a country finds itself in economic duress as Libya does now.

The biggest challenge to a new Libya, then, may be negotiating the "fault lines" between the extremists that continue to use antagonistic terms as a blanket formula to resist mediation and compromise. It is only through mediation and compromise, keeping the turf between antagonists free of landmines and barbed wire, that a democracy can exist. If that is what the Libyan populace truly seeks, it will need to build a strong framework for a constitution of laws that allow rule by tyranny to be transformed to rule by democracy.